


The Carriage Held But Just Ourselves

by imaginary_golux



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Highlander Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 01:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8081950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: From a kinkmeme prompt: Highlander AU. All Force-sensitives are immortals.Rey and Finn wander the galaxy, immortal and eternally young, but always they return to each other.





	

There’s a war on.

Rey is not sure why she is surprised. There is always a war on, somewhere - there has, in her long memory, always _been_ a war on, except for those brief years of her mortal youth when the only war she knew about was the one she fought against sand and sun and brutal overseers and lack of food. But even then she was scavenging in the remains of a war, the broken ships that had once ruined planets, so - there is always a war on.

She’s fought in some of them. She fought in the one that earned her her immortal youth, the one where she woke in the cold snow _knowing_ she had died and then fought her very first headhunter across a dying planet, the one where she knelt in the snow beside her dying first and only friend and watched his death turn into lightning and glory, watched him rise again from the cold grasp of death and smile at her like the sun rising.

She fought that war to its bitter end, because she owed a debt to him, and because she knew that if she did not, the headhunter would stalk her through the centuries. No one told her that - it was a bone-deep knowledge born into her with her rebirth, that there was _danger_ in those others like to her, who carried starfire and lightning in their bones. Danger, even, in her first and only friend - but she has never feared him, and never will, because whatever may happen, he will be standing back to back with her against the Dark, and she can trust him until the stars die and he will never fail her.

It is their regular meeting-day, today - well, meeting-week, since pinpointing a single day after a decade’s wandering is sometimes difficult. She and Finn don’t spend all their time together anymore, though for a few decades just after their rebirths they were pretty much inseparable; but eventually even being with her best friend and beloved grew wearying, and Rey - imitating their teacher - retreated to an island far from anywhere, while Finn went off to find new adventures. But they meet every decade, come hell or high water, here at Maz’s Cantina which never changes (it has been destroyed and rebuilt three times in the centuries Rey has known it, and each time rises from the tumbled stone the same as it has ever been), and talk about what they have seen, and find comfort in familiarity and love.

There’s a war on, and Rey is pretty sure Finn is going to be fighting it. He is a warrior at heart, a paladin of the Light according to Maz, and he finds the dark places and brings the innocent out of them. Rey herself is less - proactive. When the Dark _comes_ for her, when the headhunters hear about the bright-burning girl with centuries behind her young eyes, then she walks again into the Darkness and brings Light all through it, burns it down with starfire and lightning, with the blazing staff in her hands and the far-brighter power in her eyes. She has taken more heads than she cares to think about, over the years, Dark-fallen fools who heard of her and did not believe that she was so deadly as she is.

Finn has taken heads, too, though he does not seek out the chance to do so; he is not so ruthless as she is, and will offer second chances to his enemies - even third chances. But those Dark-fallen who make the mistake of attacking those Finn is _protecting_ , the innocents he has walked into the Dark to save - they do not have time to realize how great a mistake they have made. Finn does not _look_ dangerous, any more than Rey does; not for them the trappings of the Jedi order or the Dark-fallen, the swooping robes and trappings of authority. Rey still wears the clothing she finds most comfortable, the linen tunic and wrapped leggings of her long-gone youth; Finn still prefers a battered leather jacket, in memory of one long gone to dust. He wears a lightsaber at his hip, but uses a blaster by preference, and Rey’s staff is not _obviously_ a double saber, though when she needs its blades it shines forth like the Jakku sun at noon. They look - harmless. Or at least easily overcome.

This is a trap.

The Dark-fallen tend to think, for one reason or another, that what one _seems_ and what one _is_ are the same thing, and so they drape themselves in terror to seem terrifying, or in foulness to seem foul. And they think, in their false wisdom, that because Finn is gentle, he is weak; that because Rey is reclusive, she is cowardly.

But Finn’s gentleness conceals a soul of durasteel that has never broken, though many have tried to shatter it; and Rey’s reclusiveness is not a retreat to holy ground and safety, but only the patient waiting of a predator. There are many of the Dark-fallen who learned too late that sweeping robes and menacing masks will not protect them from a ‘saber’s blade in the hands of a warrior who has learned that fear is only the root and cause of courage.

So. There’s a war on, and Finn will be fighting it; and Rey is waiting for him, here at this table in the back of Maz’s Cantina with a bowl of fruit in front of her - she has never lost her delight in fruit, and hopes she never will - and thinking idly that she is a little bored, these days, of her quiet island and her solitude, and perhaps a war is just what she needs to distract her.

Especially if Finn is fighting it. She hasn’t spent much time with him, these last few decades - he had a lover for a while, and she tends not to interfere during those years - and she’s missing him a bit.

*

“Rey,” Finn says, quietly, the word so full of love it almost sings as he says it, and Rey looks up from the orange she’s peeling and smiles as Finn leans down to kiss her. “Good to see you.”

“And you,” Rey says, looking him over as he sits down. He’s got a new leather jacket - well, new in immortal terms; it’s probably seen five, maybe six years by now - and he looks healthy and happy, his eyes bright with joy. There’s a badge on his uniform, beneath the jacket, which shows his rank in some army or other - Rey squints, then grins to see he’s a commander again. He’s been a general before, in other armies, in other wars. He was the General’s apprentice, once - the only General they ever use that title for, the one who could have been immortal and chose not to be, who fought with every fiber of her being and never did learn how to surrender. They miss her, both of them, but over centuries they’ve learned to live with grief, to breathe through it, to lose and mourn and get back up again.

“How have you been?” Finn asks, and Rey shrugs, hands him a segment of the orange.

“Bored,” she admits. “There room in your new war for me?”

“Always,” Finn replies, taking the orange and bending to kiss her fingers as he does. “Ready to come out into the galaxy again, then?”

“If you say it’s a war that needs to be fought, then I’ll fight it beside you,” Rey says, shrugging. She tangles her fingers with Finn’s across the table, takes comfort in the warmth of his hand and the faint buzzing of his power against her skin. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s the same story,” Finn says, giving her a crooked smile. “When the Dark comes rising.” Rey snorts, recognizing the old poem, older than either of them, old enough that no one knows who wrote it anymore.

“All shall find the Light at last,” she replies. “But tell me who fights, and why, and where. And then I’ll follow you to battle.”

“We could use you,” Finn admits. “It’s one of us leading the Dark-siders, of course…”

*

They fight the war. They win the war, if any war can ever truly be called won: Finn takes the head of the immortal who has raised the Dark again against the Light, and Rey beside him takes his hand and grins like a wolf as the lightning of their enemy’s death rises around them. They take lovers as it pleases them; they spend their nights together or apart and do not count the hours either way. They spend a decade smuggling, the two of them in a tiny ship that skips through trackless space beneath Rey’s clever hands. They part again, for years or decades; they meet at Maz’s and share stories and make love. Finn joins Rey on her quiet island, now and again, spends years learning from her to coax green growing things into full bloom, smiles at her with flowers in his hair and pollen smudged across his cheeks like powdered gold. He brings her children, sometimes, those whose power sings in their bones like starfire and lightning, who will be immortal if they choose when they are grown, and Rey and Finn raise them together, teach them all they’ve learned from the Jedi and the General and the centuries they’ve lived, and send them out into the galaxy when they are ready. Sometimes they meet those children again across a battlefield, and grieve; sometimes they hear of headhunters who have dared touch one of those that Rey and Finn have taught, and then again they teach the Dark that it is not wise to rouse the wrath of those who choose the Light.

Rey has other lovers, as the years roll by, other loves, who fill her heart and make the long years short with joy. So too does Finn, and they tell each other tales, when they meet, of those who have been dear to them, who have made immortality a joy, that they should have so many years to find so many people to delight in. But when their mortal lovers die, or leave, as mortal lovers will - and it is not easy to love an immortal, who has seen the death of planets and the birth of civilizations, who has lived a thousand years before your birth and will live a thousand more when you are gone - when their mortal lovers leave them, to death or other lives, Rey and Finn have each other.

Finn is Rey’s first and best friend, the partner of her soul; she may love others, as the years roll by, may glory in the vast panoply of the galaxy’s people, but always and always she returns to Finn, to the one who came back for her, who _always_ comes back for her, who has stood by her side through war and peace and love and hate and life and death, who is her first beloved and will be her last. Their lives are tangled together, inextricable, and Rey - Rey, who is often alone but has not been lonely since she met him, who is fierce to his gentleness and fire to his stone, who is starfire to his lightning - Rey can think of no one better to spend her immortality beside.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I could not stop for Death –  
> He kindly stopped for me –  
> The Carriage held but just Ourselves –  
> And Immortality.  
> \--Emily Dickinson
> 
> When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;  
> Three from the circle, three from the track;  
> Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;  
> Five will return and one go alone.
> 
> Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;  
> Wood from the burning, stone out of sound;  
> Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;  
> Six signs the circle, and the grail gone before.
> 
> Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold.  
> Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of the old;  
> Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;  
> All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree.  
> \--Susan Cooper
> 
> Also, I'm on tumblr as imaginarygolux - drop on by!


End file.
